Edge 45: House on the Range by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: NEL
Published: 2017-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

MISS Mary uttered a single word. Said it so softly Edge did not catch it, but he guessed from the tone of her voice that it was an obscenity. Then she bustled across the lobby and went up the staircase in the wake of the others. While he crossed the porch to pick up the Winchester from where it rested against the parapet and canted it to his shoulder as he moved to the top of the steps facing east. His lean face with a night's growth of bristles sprouting over much of it betrayed nothing of what he was thinking as he watched the line of six wagons make slow progress between the foothills of the storm lashed mountains and the strangely sited building in the desert.

He was sweating steadily, the beads oozing from his pores to either course across exposed skin or soak into his clothing—staining his shirt at the armpits and the base of his spine. The salt moisture was drawn from him entirely by the oppressive heat trapped between the shiny dark clouds and the floor of the desert that no longer showed a sign of having been rained on so heavily during the early hours of the new day. There was something not right about the line of wagons, but his sense of lurking danger did not trigger the slightest degree of tension to compound the effect of the humid heat. Whatever brand of trouble rode aboard the ill-assorted collection of vehicles was not that which called for him to be ready to respond with bullet or blade.

But he kept a sweat greasy grip around the frame of the rifle, perhaps because he forgot about the gun sloped to his shoulder as he gazed toward the train, intent upon seeing material evidence of whatever it was that he sensed to be incongruous about the wagons.

There were two Conestogas with canvas covers stretched taut over the bows—one leading and the second bringing up the rear. The first drawn by four heavy horses and the other by six mules. In between were four freight wagons with rigid sides and tops of timber, all of these with business names painted out or still emblazoned on the sides. A pair of mules hauled the second wagon in line and four oxen were in the traces of the third. The fourth and fifth were drawn by two horses apiece, these animals looking like they could double for mounts if need be. Certainly there were no saddle horses hitched to any tailgates. Three milk cows were attached by lead lines to the rear of the final wagon in the line.

Wagons and animals alike showed many and varied traces of the long and hard trail they had covered—the most recent difficulty they had been forced to endure witnessed by the heavy caking of mud adhering to wearily moving legs and creaking wagon timbers. And then, as the train rolled sluggishly close enough for the half-breed to see this mud for what

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